Adaptive Curmudgeon

Last year was rough. I responded by being extra careful with my health. (Not an unwise choice.) This year I’m feeling a lot better (though far from prefect). A trip I’d been delaying “had to happen”. Mrs. Curmudgeon and I spent what seemed like a million hours hurtling through “who gives a shit” at the “speed of Dodge”. We’re beat. Even the dog is exhausted. (My theory is that anytime I’m not on an airplane or a motorcycle I can travel with the dog; so we do.)

Unexpectedly, the exhaustion and mental strain has a side effect. A bit of the “old Curmudgeon” has emerged. All men secretly think they’re a bad ass just this side of Chuck Norris and I’m no exception. In times before last year I often did crazy shit simply because “why not”?

I’m not saying it’s good. I’m not saying it’s bad. It’s situational. Apparently my road-exhaustion overwhelms my new-ish resolution to take better care of my health. I keep looking at sketchy food and saying; “Fuck it, I’m too tired to pursue a fresh salad or something. I’ll eat that thing right there and see what happens”.

Last week I needed a sip of something to take some medicine. The tapwater wasn’t very tasty so I opened a “fridge of mystery”. It was an adventure. There was unlabeled Tupperware, things wrapped in paper which I couldn’t identify, and something unholy called “oat milk”. I was hoping for a can of Coke or whatever. Instead, I found a half drank bottle of cran-apple juice. It was the best I could do.

New Curmudgeon is supposed to say “oh dear, that’s sketchy” and motivate his ass to the grocery store. It’s not rocket science to buy something in a sealed container. Current Curmudgeon was in a reckless mood. Down the hatch! Later, I realized the juice had an expiration date in January. Oh well. I didn’t notice anything. Cran-apple is pretty harsh, it probably killed any microbes.

Yesterday, I was home (finally!) but completely poleaxed. I made some coffee and opened our own fridge. We had 90% emptied it before the trip but there was an opened bottle of cream. I wanted cream for my coffee. The important part here is that Mrs. Curmudgeon was elsewhere. I was, therefore, unsupervised.

I sniffed it like a drug detecting dog. It seemed fine. I observed it as it poured, sniffing carefully all the way. As far as I could tell it was fine. Why fret over such a small thing? Am I not a harried and mentally fried Curmudgeon? The coffee was delicious. See? Everything was fine.

Three hours later my organs exploded.

I hate that! I just can’t tell. Mrs. Curmudgeon identifies such things by pheromone and therefore never gets caught off guard. As a person who never misses a trick she’ll leave anything in the fridge knowing that only an idiot would eat certain things. I’m just that idiot. Neandertal that I am, a dairy product can have evolved into a new life form and I just can’t detect it. Mentally damaged? Maybe. Insufficient senses? Certainly. Sick all afternoon, definitely. I was meaning to lose weight anyway.

Today, the coffee was fresh and the cream had been replaced by Mrs. Curmudgeon. She wants me to live! It was delicious! I drank it all. I mean the whole damn pot. I’d been craving our house’s coffee. We don’t skimp on coffee grounds and the coffee we make at our house tastes better than anything I ever found on the road.

Several hours later (just now in fact) I was once again… unsupervised. I wanted more coffee. But I didn’t want to waste the grounds for a whole pot. I decided to make an emergency Keurig. Our Keurig has been collecting dust forever. I literally keep it for “urgent coffee emergencies”… including the once in a blue moon need for decaf. In any other situation I’ll percolate in leisure or use the regular coffee maker.

I washed off the dust and found our Tupperware sealed box of K-Cups. Inside the Tupperware was a still unopened box of Death Wish K-Cups. I popped one in the machine. I’m drinking it right now. It tastes OK. Certainly better than the shit I drank while on the road.

However, I just checked the box. It is “best by October 29, 2019″!

2019?!?! Good grief, that really is a Death Wish cup of coffee!

That said, I’m not too worried. Who knows what unnatural things are stashed in a K-Cup? It’s not like there’s a vegetable in there or anything. I’m guessing it’s pure chemical mystery that has nothing to do with actual “food”. It’s likely just as good as the day a factory excreted it onto an assembly line.

Or, maybe in three hours, my organs will explode? I’m kinda’ open to either scenario.

I think it’s time to go on a rampage and throw expired shit out. I need “day zero”… the day when the fridge (and old K-cups) were ruthlessly eradicated. But first, I’m sipping this delicious coffee.

A.C.

Update: Tomorrow, to atone for my sins, I shall percolate a pot of coffee manually. Fresh grounds and a warm flame. I will also bake a loaf of bread. After all that time on the road and eating at McDonalds and similar poisons of modernity, I need to get back on the bandwagon. I shall stop rolling the dice!

My current trip (which isn’t over yet) has been a mixed success. I went to where I had to go. I did what I had to do. I’m en route back home. Can’t bitch about that.

Also, the “Linuxed” Mac is working well. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have typed this and you wouldn’t be reading it (though the text won’t go live in real time).

Less positive is that I’m exhausted (trips sometimes do that). My exhaustion activated my truck’s “Chrysler Circuit”. My theory is that I own an absolutely excellent Cummings diesel engine, but through some tragic madness of our strange universe it was mandatory that it be crammed into a Dodge. Further, somewhere in the rat’s nest of electronic cruft surrounding the good engine in a fair body is a circuit that sounds an alarm whenever douchebags in Detroit feel I’ve gone too long without a tithe at their altar. I call this the “Chrysler Circuit” but who knows who really benefits? (I gave up trying to figure out who owns who in the Stellantis ecosystem of inbred auto making.) Anyway, the “Chrysler Circuit” seems to know when I’m most vulnerable to mechanical bullshit. I swear it reads my mind.

Shit went down of a non dangerous manner but I chose to pull over. (Which was wise.) The good news is it’s nothing big or complicated or hard to diagnose. Presumably (?) I’ll get it fixed tomorrow. Despite my Chrysler Circuit ramblings it’s something that would happen to any truck and I can’t really claim any particular vexing issue… this time.

Regardless, my wings were clipped. I landed where I didn’t want or plan to be; a few hours after everything was closed. Isn’t travel fun?

I found a good hotel and ate an OK meal (which is a big deal when traveling). I kicked back and started to snooze but then a handful of elephants moved into the room above me. OK so it’s a semi-good hotel. They only pause their stomping long enough to do what sounds like working up to a bar-room brawl. OK so it’s a tolerable hotel.

I’ve been listening to the commotion from the room above me. I give it an hour. There’s either going to be fucking or fighting… maybe both. It’s an annoying hotel.

Oh well, it’s not like I live here. I’m reasonably optimistic I’ll be back in motion tomorrow. By sunset I’ll be in a different State. Today was just a minor hiccup; all trips have them.

I’ve been on the road five days. The little spud of a computer has done well. (One hotel had no WiFi, can’t blame that on the computer.)

I didn’t have much time to reply to comments. I’d forgotten how little “down time” one has while in motion. All I’ve been doing is driving.

Anyway, a Linuxed obsolete Mac has been good so far.

I’m going on a trip. It’s neither vacation nor work. I may drop off-line.

I don’t (didn’t?) own a laptop. I also keep my cell phone as restricted as I can. (I’m not going to let that little mind spike and spy device worm too deeply into my world.)

I have an iPad. It works but iPads aren’t really “compose a post” devices. I’ve tried Bluetooth keyboards and stuff, they work in theory but less so in practice. The truth is that iPads (I’m including all tablets in this theory, Android too) are built for consuming but not producing. There are folks out there who insist they’ve used them for everything: they’ve written novels on them, they run a server farm from the little touch screen, and they  supposedly they manage a corporate budget on some spreadsheet adjacent app or whatever too. Such users are probably an outlier; or exaggerating. Also my iPad is old and the screen is cracked. It still works fine as an entertainment toy; cracked screen or not.

I was going to buy a laptop before this trip. I didn’t. I thought about it but just couldn’t burn the cash. Every time I thought about buying a laptop I thought about NOT spending the money. NOT spending money is one of my favorite activities. I chose to kick the can down the road a bit longer. I shall also daydream about all the stuff that costs the same as a laptop but is so much more fun to have.

My “solution” was to scrounge a weird alternative option and see if I can “make do”. I found a very old, very obsolete, tiny, not very powerful MacBook Air. It’s got a screen the size of a pop-tart. Ok fine it’s two pop tarts. I didn’t know they came this small! There’s not much memory, the storage is small, and the battery is possibly aged. It was probably gutless when it was new and that was many years ago. It was on its way to an e-waste facility. I grabbed it and scampered away with it.

It’s far fro perfect. I was hoping the hardware would be upgradeable. It’s not. They say the RAM is soldered in. I think swapping the battery is an issue too. Shame because it only runs an hour or so on DC. For now the AC power cable works so I’ll get by. Maybe limited RAM is also “good enough”?

Realistically, it was trash. But I needed something and I like to “build”. It would be a shame to miss this chance to try turning nothing into something. Another word for “cheapskate” is “guy who really does recycle”.

The machine was slower than molasses on its native OS. Apple hasn’t supported the OS for ages and I can see why. So I made a bootable thumbdrive with MX Linux. It booted fine. I told the interface to “go for it”. The button didn’t say “unleash whatever nerd powers of Linux are at hand” but that’s what I should say. There are clever people out there and they know what’s inside a Mac better than I. They did well! I’m impressed. The install was fast-ish and the light simple version of Linux it seems stable. I’ve done Linux/Win dual boots before but this worked better. I’ve never done a full OS nuke of an Apple product. It shockingly well. In fact, if this test run works out I might do it again. I’ll buy an obsolete but not quite so obsolete Mac on eBay or something specifically so I can “Linux it”. (I’m not the first guy to think of this idea. It’s a minor secondary market.)

The trip is a real world test. Is this little pop tart enough for blogging from hotels or whatnot? Even with Linux I have my doubts. The screen is small and the CPU is weak. I guess I’ll find out.

If I vanish for a couple weeks, it just means my experiment cratered. Or it could work fine. Wish me luck.

Friday the 13th is a mnemonic I use to remember a bad event. I deliberately remember. We are already post-apocalypse. So why freak out about another one? I’m not saying that to be click bait, I mean it. Shit that would be considered “apocalyptic” has already happened. It’s not negative or a “blackpill” to accept that shitty things are already a done deal. Don’t despair; embrace it and grow.

Here’s the good part. “Apocalypse” ain’t as bad as I expected. The terrifying phrase “post-apocalypse” is “just another day”. It could be worse… and it has been… but I’m not ravaging the wastelands for canned goods. Neither are you.

Let’s back up a bit and talk about my “mnemonic date”.

I bought my first dirt bike on February 29th 2020. “Leap year day” is another excellent “mnemonic date”. (Spoiler alert… the bike was an awesome decision!)

Being a cheapskate, I’d driven all day to get a better price on the motorcycle. That night we checked into a hotel. A busload of diversity showed up at the same hotel and partied like a herd of wildebeests. It was pathetically clichéd. Youthful hollering dipshit hoodlums had imported what can only be called “a couple carloads of hos”. Loud mating rituals annoyed the hell out of me.

The following day, despite my rush to get home, I pulled up to a grocery store and told Mrs. Curmudgeon “…there’s this thing going on in China, I think it’s probably nothing but people might overreact…” She agreed. We bought a ton of food. That was the day after February 29th.

I already knew people were frazzled. All events came with blame and accusation. Democrats were (predictably) calling Trump a racist for interfering with Chinese airplane flights. Trump was trying to do something about which he could do nothing useful. Regardless of which party bitched at which other party, the pathogen was probably already planet wide. The other news was (I think) forest fires in Australia; which were of course caused by global warming.

Two weeks later a nation that had been tearing itself apart for years finally had the nervous breakdown it craved. I knew something stupid would happen in 2020. It was the fourth year of concerted temper tantrums because Hillary wasn’t coronated. Something had to release all that pressure. Now I know that a large portion of humans, find it thrilling to publicly lose one’s shit. I also learned that many folks, once pushed to the edge, can’t return to normal. They literally lack the ability.

To me, COVID was just one more of the usual (and repetitive) panics over pathogens. Bird flu. Swine flu. Hanta virus. Zika. Ebola. Growing up Gen X, I’d already seen the granddaddy of them all; AIDS. Panics happen periodically and they’re an addictive pleasant activity for mentally ill or mentally ill adjacent. Why did COVID do what Ebola did not? I don’t know. We’re all just mammals in a social media experiment. It was probably timing. Social media hit a new plateau just as COVID gave an excuse to flake out.

I was on the road a few weeks later. It was Friday the 13th in March of the year 2020. (The ultimate mnemonic date!) I drove home listening to the radio. It was fascinating. Hourly and then quarterly and finally continuous reporting on civilization’s cracking façade. Dominoes fell all day. It started with cancelled basketball games. Then it was travel stuff. Soon it was a race to see who could overreact the most, the fastest, and demonstrate their new mental state the most publicly. By sunset, idiots were fighting over toilet paper.

What a year it was; “lockdowns”, “mostly peaceful protests”, curb stomping the economy, shut down churches, irrelevant arrows panted on Walmart’s floor, the end of medical privacy, arresting people on beaches and at parks, medically pointless masks made of old bandannas, closed hospitals, dancing nurses, the list is endless. None of it was reality based.

It culminated (or maybe it didn’t?) in the all time record setting vote count for Joe Biden. Joe’s awesome come-from-behind win was one for the ages! It came a few hours after I watched Trump win the election and turned in for the night. I went to bed in one world; I woke up in another.

Repeat after me because it was once required by law: “Biden is the most immensely popular candidate to ever exist. His vote count, the highest in record, was official and legally enforced proof of his popularity.” Questioning Biden’s amazing record vote count  would get you cancelled, deplatformed, demonetized, ostracized, censored, doxed, fired, sued, and possibly imprisoned. Joe Biden, the most popular candidate to ever exist, was sworn in behind chain link fence; as one does. Some 1,500 political prisoners were tossed in jail; which is to be expected from a totally legitimate massively popular candidate.

All those things I mentioned… we live after them. It doesn’t have to be my list. Pick your list. Think about what you remember most. Whatever it was, we live post-that.

Was 2020 “the apocalypse”? Not in the true “everybody dies” meaning. I’m writing this and you’re reading it, so we’re both alive. But we did experience the complete end of one way of living and the abrupt, violent, angry, emergence of something different.

It’s at least apocalypse adjacent.

Biden, the most popular president ever, put me on a list of people without required injections. I was on another list to be fired. I was not fired. I didn’t control events that put me on the list. Events that made it moot happened without my input. I was viciously shoved to and fro by huge waves of stupid.

I learned then that people don’t want to do their own dirty work. Karen at the HOA would gladly have you shot, but she won’t do it herself. The vax was enforced with isolation, travel limits, de-banking, censorship, social ostracization, free donuts, Walmart gift cards, relatives in hospitals dying alone, PSAs in media, you name it… but the goal was to make you subjugate yourself. You were ordered to bow your own knee.

That’s odd. If they were truly worried about a pathogen why not just grab me? If it’s life and death assign a handful of Marines to slam me to the ground and administer an injection. Didn’t happen. It wasn’t life or death. They didn’t dose illegal aliens. Or prisoners. Or “peaceful protesters”. Or welfare recipients.

Many people reading this got an injection they didn’t want. They did it to shut up someone who badgered them into it. Or maybe an employer suddenly decided they had the right to fire anyone who didn’t get medical treatments like a good pet should. But nobody got tackled in the street and whacked with a pneumatic injector. Why not? That was an important lesson.

Was it the apocalypse? To me it was.

Laws stopped being laws. If it could be done it was done. If it wasn’t done then it wasn’t. Legal stopped mattering. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 limited disclosure of protected health information. Until if didn’t. One day it just became ok for your boss to demand your vaccination data. He could put it on an Excel spreadsheet and post it on the wall if he wanted. After a few weeks, he was allowed to demand you get an injection. The vaccine? Heroin? Steroids? At least for one of them was suddenly the bosses pejorative.

Was that the apocalypse? Seems like it.

Illegal aliens were distributed to various voting districts. Are there immigration laws. Are there no immigration laws? Our government engaged in human trafficking. How is that legal? Because “shut up” is how it’s legal. Even if you support what happened, why not just change the law first and then follow it. You know, like civilized people?

Was that the apocalypse? I think so.

Which of many straws broke the camel’s back? Hard to day. But life now is forever different than life then. It sounds like an apocalypse. It felt like a zombie outbreak. It was like catastrophe.

The most popular president we’ve ever had was non compos mentis. Was he in charge? If not him, who? A leading opposition politician was sued, lawfared, censored, harried, and shot. We were told it such mistreatment was legal, moral, and justified. A bullet passed a quarter inch from the major opposition party candidate’s skull. It flat out killed a man behind him.

That’s an apocalypse.

If you don’t like the word “apocalypse” here’s a different phrase: “the shit hit the fan”. 

And now? I’m on the other side. You are too. More stupid shit will surely happen, but I’ve lost the ability to freak out about what might happen. I’m hardened by what has happened.

I can’t get on board with panic talk. They say if the SAVE act isn’t passed it’s the end of democracy. It sounds impressive but aren’t we looking at some event that already happened? Was 2020 was the end of democracy. Maybe what went down with Nixon was the end of democracy? Or Lincoln? Why fret over degrees of shit hitting varieties of fans? Nor do I care about the bleating of emotionally incontinent shallow thinkers. If you don’t know the difference between democracy and republic I don’t care about your opinion.

Another threat, this thing or that thing is another Ft. Sumpter. We already had a Ft. Sumpter. It sucked, a lot of people died, and a different Republican president got shot. Feels like that was a nice clear apocalypse? Our apocalypse has been a lot less bloody… so far.

Same with war reporting. It’s always impending and it’s always horrific. War in Iran is going great, or terrible. But didn’t they take hostages when I was nine? I’m supposed to fret over Venezuela. But didn’t a portion of their whole nation cross the border a few years ago. I’m supposed to flake about Cuba. But didn’t they finally achieve net zero. Wasn’t net zero a goal? Is this worse than the Cuban missile crisis of 1962? Does anyone remember their dumb little Facebook icons about Ukraine?

The point is, don’t fret over bad shit that may happen because you’ve already ridden out bad shit that was very real. It was oddly survivable. Being agitated means nothing to nobody.

The president himself declared the contents of my bloodstream not up to his standards. I lived. I didn’t even get fired. I lived through 9/11/2001. A huge terrorist attack on the tallest buildings in one of our biggest cities is… well… what was it? Yet another apocalypse.

See what I mean? Some disasters are very bad; the black death in 1350. Others just suck, disco and bad cars in the 1970’s? Bad shit happens, if we’re lucky we endure, very often the aftermath isn’t quite as dismal as we feared.

Two things of note today:

1. First, happy rainbow sweetness: The chiropractor says I’m more or less fine. My epic faceplant on the ice tweaked me a little, but not much. It’s not a big deal to the universe but it’s a very welcome event in my little world.
2. Second, bitter long awaited relief: Paul Ehrlich is dead. Ehrlich was a grandstanding fuckwit. He spread anxiety and fear like some sort of intellectual vampire. He fed on misery. He twisted everyone’s view of adaptable humans, their fabulous planet, and the nature of humanity on earth. In particular, his bullshit buried Gen X in brutal negativity. He kept it up (despite massive evidence to the contrary) from before I was born all the way until last week when they planted him. The only thing that stopped him was death. His incorrect crap about human starvation was the most wrong that he (or anybody else) possibly could have been. Literally! There was mathematically no way to be any more wrong and no more incorrect timing! Ehrlich’s false inducement of misery pushed the masses into blackpilled doomer hopelessness. Humans could have celebrated the best improvement in food sources in all of humanity’s existence if it weren’t for Ehrlich’s lies. Ehrlich’s was disproven in dozens of measurable ways. He never learned. He never improved his theories. It was all black fates and death with that jackass! He warped at least one and maybe several generations. What he did is evil. When you saw Greta Thunberg gibbering in front of a gullible UN, you were seeing the cost in human life and potential caused by Ehrlich’s poisonous social contagion. His soul is in the hands of God. That’s above my pay grade. But the world of the living is improved with his absence. It will take decades (centuries?) for society to mentally recover from his bad ideas, but the healing starts now.

I had one of those days. It’s been building for a month; it was coming and it hit me like a truck.

For just shy of a year I’ve been feeling battered. I rode out a health scare and that’s never fun. I’ve been getting better in small but steady increments. Except winter has been long and inactive. I feel like progress stalled. The last month or so has felt like I’m going backwards.

I know it’s partly my attitude but trying to be an adult about things has been a mixed bag. My brain theorizes things will clear up as soon as the weather warms up. Surely a little chainsaw based exercise will do me wonders. My soul tells my brain to shut it’s nerdy pie-hole because I’ve been cooped up too long and it’s in no mood for philosophizing. End result, I’ve been irrationally grumpy and agitated.

A single glorious moment on my trusty dirtbike let off steam. I felt good. I thought I’d made it. Sadly, I was grounded again. Just too cold for two wheels even for an idiot like me.

Planning ahead I’ve been salting the shit out of the ice patch that is my driveway. I had hopes I’d roll my cruiser out to the pavement as soon as suitable temperatures returned. I want to shake the cobwebs from between my ears.

Alas, it is not to be… yet. The ice was nearly gone and the snow was mostly fading. Then all hell broke loose. Afternoon temps dropped precipitously. The skies turned evil. I’m in the habit of ignoring weather reports but I can catch a clue when it’s delivered with a sledge. Shit was about to go down.

It started to snow. The wind picked up. The first flakes came down hard. This was not a drill! It stressed the living shit out of me.

I wasn’t alone. A pair of early summer migratory fowl went apeshit. I’m rusty with my birdwatching skills. I’m not sure what they were. A pair of big ass white birds with long necks came hurtling out of the clouds as if to remind me that dinosaurs were here before mammals. They dropped down like long range bombers with iced wings looking to belly flop on the nearest thing that wasn’t a tree. They plunged out of view into my swamp. Where they landed, I have no idea. They were huge and all white with black beaks. I’m guessing tundra swans? The black beak seems to rule out snow geese.

I dithered a bit, feeling gloomy. Then, shortly after sunset, grabbed my sled and started hauling firewood. There was already 4″ of snow!

I’m well aware risk goes up when fatigue and stress loom. Plus there was 4″ of snow (already!) covering slick ice. Treacherous is an understatement. But this isn’t my first rodeo. I was prepared. I wore big boots with beefy tread, a fluffy fur hat, a bulky hunting jacket, and strong leather gloves. I know when to be careful.

I waddled my ass through the gloom, delivering the wood… slipping and sliding with every step. Soon I was done. “There, I did the right thing. Good for me.”

I took two steps effortlessly pulling the empty sled, put my foot down on a sheet of ice at a 20 degree slope. It was invisible, covered with half a foot of wet slop, and precisely where it shouldn’t have been. I went down like a ton of bricks.

You know that sound you hear when a chiropractor does whatever unholy thing they do to your spine? I heard that. A lot of it. All the way from waist to neck. Crrrruuunnnchhhh.

It was a big hit. Hard. Like I’d been walking around with a football in my hand and got unexpectedly pummeled by the Green Bay Packers defensive line.

I spent a few minutes laying in the freezing dark. No stars in my eyes. That’s good. I didn’t fall straight back on my spine or straight forward onto my face. That’s good.

So why was I laying here getting covered with snow? Because I just knew this is going to hurt so damn much when I move. On the other hand my loved ones were almost certainly unlikely to notice my absence for… a while. They love me, but I could be there for hours.

For the first time in years I kinda’ wished I’d stashed my cell phone in my pocket.

Finally, I got up and staggered into the house. There was no blood. I was very addled. Nature had rung my bell something fierce. I was pissed off and made sure everyone heard about it. Then, because there’s nothing you can do but live another hour, I just sat in a chair; very still, for hours. The fire I’d fueled kept me warm at least. God, I felt bad.

Eventually I went to bed. I dreaded it. The next morning was sure to be agony. I’m no longer 19 and hits like that can wreck a guy who’s old enough to care about his 401k. My last thought was a prayer “Please lord, those flexibility exercises I’ve been doing must have banked something? Cut me some slack please.”

It worked. I woke up feeling marginally ok. I mean I’m not hopping around doing the limbo but I’m not weeping in agony either. It was a quiet day. I napped a lot. No bruises. As far as I can tell no cracked ribs. I’m pretty sure every damn vertebrae got a workout, but it all ended up where it should be?

I was lucky. Or maybe those flexibility exercises gave me a +2 to avoid damage on a failed dexterity saving throw. Or maybe God was like “Ok, this one has had enough for a while.” Or, the universe is a void and there’s no meaning to anything.

All I know is I’m up and walking after a hit that felt like it would kill a buffalo. I’m surprised and grateful… and sore but maybe not too injured.

We’ve got firewood for the weekend. So that’s nice. When we run out I’ll replenish with the tractor instead of the sled. I never want to walk in that location again.

In my last post I mentioned an “Adirondack Lean To”. I assumed everyone knows what I’m talking about. They don’t. Time to add a little background info.

Below is a photo of an Adirondack Lean To that’s in the actual Adirondacks. It’s from an article instructing on Lean To etiquette. I haven’t been to this location but there are hundreds that look just like this. This lean to is in very good shape, it was probably recently “refreshed”.

By the way, etiquette is a big deal in the hinterland in general and lean tos in specific. It’s pretty easy; don’t be a fuckin’ animal! If you’re going to be a pain in the ass, stay in the city where you belong. Nature is unforgiving. Out there, it behooves everyone to behave intelligently and avoid messing up what might be lifesaving shelter.

A lean to is a log cabin adjacent contraption. It has only three walls and the firepit is outside the structure. Shockingly, it works. The fire radiates warmth (and hopefully not too much smoke) into the structure. It’s caveman level basic. No chimney. No windows. No plumbing. No electricity.

Despite (because of?) their crude nature, they’re pretty pleasant. You’re sheltered from rain, snow, and most wind. When it’s cold out it’s warmer than a tent. When it’s hot out it’s cooler than a tent. It’s not as weather resistant as a cabin but it’s not as stuffy either. The view is almost always awesome.

A lean to is specifically NOT a cabin! Remote forest cabins generate complications; first from the crude construction (and low budget) and second from being abandoned months at a time. A lean to avoids these issues by being too simple to host them.

For example, lean tos usually just have rocks as a foundation. That’s substandard for a four walled structure but “good enough” for a lean to.

Time for a digression about people and remote cabins/lean tos. (I’m talking about true wilderness and not some dude’s summer home near a suburban park.)

You might think a cabin is more secure to hold your stuff (assuming it’s your cabin) but many remote cabins are left unlocked. Part of this is simple kindness and safety. Shelter is important! You don’t want to find the corpse of some dude of who died of hypothermia just outside a locked a cabin’s door. Part of this is to spare damage, a dude who’s freezing to death will feel justified breaking into your shelter with his axe. He might feel bad about the damage but if shit gets real a locked door is just a logistics issue. On a high level of morality, some cabin owners hope people passing by will use the structure without damaging it… which happens more than you’d think. On a low level of morality, there’s usually nothing in a cabin worth stealing because there is no law enforcement out there.

Depending on the situation, it might be legal (even expected) to wander into a cabin and stay overnight. Staying in a lean to is much less invasive. They’re more reasonably accepted as “available”. Regardless, God is watching. Don’t be an ass!

Note: When you use any remote structure (legally!) act like you’ve got class. It ain’t a hotel and you ain’t a paying customer, you’re a guest! Leave the place tidy. Don’t leave behind food that’ll attract critters unless it’s dry goods in a tough sealed box meant to be in a place like that.

Never leave until the wood box is well stocked for the next person. Leave behind at least as much wood as you found there (ideally more). If you burn all the wood and the next person  freezes or has to gather wood in a rainstorm, you’re going to hell.

Generations of fuckwits may have carved their names in the table. Be better than that. If you feel like carving your name on a wall, punch yourself in the balls until the desire fades.

If there’s a logbook, write in it how much you like the place. If there’s an address of the people/organization that supports the structure, shoot them a donation when you get back to town.

Vagrants and jackwits may wander around cities but in the hinterland you should always be on your best behavior.

Here are some more cabin logistics that lean tos avoid:

Cabins need a heavy (and expensive) woodstove hauled to the location. When the roof leaks (and the roof always leaks) the stove will rust. Meanwhile, a family of raccoons will move into the chimney. Plus some folks honestly don’t know how to operate things like a damper.

Cabins need windows. Windows means glass. The windows will eventually be broken glass.

Animals absolutely love to wreck cabins. A cabin left alone too long will eventually be trashed by six squirrels, two porcupines, and a moose. I don’t know why, but it happens. A lean to, on the other hand, won’t suffer so much. Critters walk in, sniff around, and (usually) leave. Wasps and bees and bats and such are more likely take up residence in a cabin than a lean to. They’re also universally easier to evict from a lean to. Cabins can get supremely funky but ten minutes with a broom will adequately clean most lean tos.  Now that I think about it, human squatters are also less likely to occupy a lean to.

Removing the “completion” of a cabin changes the equation. The missing wall creates something that a cabin is not.

Why the Adirondacks? Originally, Adirondack guides constructed lean tos. It was their job. Hunters appreciated a warm dry place to sleep. Probably trappers used/built them too. They were generally constructed with materials found within a few hundred yards of the build site. The CCC also built a bunch in the 1930’s, many replacing decrepit pre-existing shelters.

They became tradition. People love them. I love them! People volunteer to maintain them. There are a couple hundred publicly available lean tos scattered around the Adirondacks.

Lean tos aren’t unique to the Adirondacks. It’s an idea old as time. Creating handy safe spots in rugged places is “Human 101”. Folks have made rock shelters, emergency mountain retreats, lean tos, fishing camps, line shelters, sheep wagons, helispots, warming shelters, private remote cabins; probably they made such things even in the stone age. Some Norwegian things called a “Lavvu” look like lean tos but not all of them. I’m not sure how that translates. I’ve seen the most “typical” lean tos in the Adirondacks and at Boy Scout events in Appalachia (back when there were Boy Scouts). But I’ve also seen them at (US) National Parks, National Forests, State Forests, ghost towns, old logging camps, and even along snowmobile trails. If you look around, you’ll find lean tos everywhere.

Here’s a link where you can buy a reprint of the historic plan for an Adirondack lean to. It’s from the CCC in the 1930’s.

Here’s another photo of a current lean. This one is in the Adirondacks. Article link here.

While “Adirondack Lean To” is a fairly specific design, there’s a thousand variants. I’ve been to this lean to but I camped elsewhere. (I snagged the photo from the internet.) This one is not in the Adirondacks. It can only be accessed by boat.

Here’s a lean to I found while on a motorcycle excursion. It was a little sketchy. That’s life. Things left in the woods need periodic maintenance or they turn back into the woods.

Here’s a video of Kent Survival making his own lean to on (presumably) his own land. I can’t help but mock his pretentious ear gauges but he makes a very fine lean to. Excellent workmanship! I think he’s in the UK.

Here’s a few videos from Survival Russia. He followed historical precedent as he read from Horace Kephart’s Book Camping & Woodcraft. That’s a book from around 1906-ish. He calls it an Appalachian Shelter. He built his version in Siberia.

Now you know.

When is a standard nighttime dream elevated to a vision? I’ve no idea. A few nights ago I dreamed of a mundane yet pleasant time from real life. The dream seemed to matter.

When I was young (already on the path to curmudgeonhood, but sporting better hair and no backaches) I was living in the middle of nowhere. I worked like a dog all week and stayed away from “town” lest I spend money on the weekends. For job reasons, I had keys to a hunk of land. On this hunk of land was a private road.

It was the weekend and the weather was glorious. At the time I was achingly, deeply, utterly broke. (My current status as mildly and temporarily broke seems so very manageable by comparison.) When you’ve got time to kill and no money, God has a plan… it’s called fishing. If fishing won’t keep you occupied, there’s always camping.

I opened the gate and drove on through, locking it after me. (My employer was cool with this.) I drove several miles down forest roads until I hit the end of my access. There was another locked gate. The road beyond wasn’t really a road. It probably hadn’t experienced a car since the Model T. This was my trailhead.

What mighty overlanding beast had I taken on this glorious quest? A station wagon.

Do you remember when people could get to town and back without all wheel drive? I do. I remember when it was perfectly normal to take basic, stock, rear wheel drive, passenger cars on forest roads. This wasn’t odd. We were practically a different species back then.

I had a battered and ill fitting second hand backpack. I was carrying a smattering of crappy, decrepit, camping gear. I didn’t own a sleeping pad. (My back hurts just thinking about it but I was pretty bulletproof at that age.) I had a pretty good tent and an OK sleeping bag. That was the important part.

I had a compass and a paper topographic map.

GPS didn’t exist.

I couldn’t afford fancy “backpacking food”. I had a can of SpaghettiOs. I remember this very clearly. The can was a special treat for myself. I’d “saved up”. I know I had other food (probably packets of instant oatmeal), but the details are lost to time.

I had a canteen of tapwater. Even back then, it was unwise to drink unfiltered/untreated water. I know I didn’t own a filter. I had some iodine tabs. I viewed them with suspicion. I’ve only used iodine treated water as last resort.

I walked away from a car that was parked at the end of a road behind a locked gate. I don’t remember if I’d left information with anybody but it would’ve been weird if I had. I probably left my name and destination on a paper on the dash, that was common at the time.

Nobody knew where I was. Nobody would notice if I vanished. Cell phones didn’t exist.

It’s strange how much we as a people have changed. I walked straight into the heart of wilderness. Now we carry a communication device to buy butter.

It was a long time ago but I remember it well. I thrashed through some brush to get to a trail of the sort frequented by “normal recreationists”. I feared I would run into gaggle of them; Spandex and Gore-tex clad people that migrate in groups. My solo hiking, denim and workboot self, planned to step silently into the brush and let them pass. This has been my habit forever. It still is. If I have half a chance to not meet someone… I’ll take it.

I crossed two streams on well maintained suspension bridges. My mind tells me I had my dog with me but that’s a false memory. I know damn well my childhood dog wasn’t there. Memory is not accurate, it is a simulacrum. The important part is my rational self knows the dog wasn’t there.

I didn’t hike overly far. Well under ten miles. My target was a lean to. It appeared just where the dot on the map indicated.

It was empty. I was delighted. I didn’t want to share a lean to and I wasn’t in a mood to use my tent.

In fact, I never saw anyone that whole weekend.

I tossed my sleeping bag in the lean to. The tent became a lumpy pillow. I started a fire, popped the top on my SpaghettiOs, and cooked them in the can.

Life was good. It was… complete.

I think I only spent one night out there. Maybe it was two. What’s funny is that I don’t remember so literally not a single human on earth knows for sure.

In a public Adirondack Lean To you’ll usually find a logbook. If there was one, I’m sure I wrote something. I wonder now what I thought to record?

In due time I returned to the station wagon. I was back at work promptly Monday morning. Nothing exciting happened. Yet I remember it as a glorious summer trip.

In a dream, I relived this trip. A half a lifetime away and using technology utterly inconceivable at the time, I investigated. I’m very good at geography. Was I really as remote as I remembered?

I hunted around on Google Earth until I found the spot. When I did I zoomed out. Holy shit! It was just a short trip but the place was the real deal.

It’s easy to have what I call “geographic chauvinism”. You can sit in Montana and think there’s no wilderness in “the east”. You can sit in Alaska and think there’s no wilderness in “the continental US”. You can sit in Whitehorse (Canada) or Harstad (Norway) or Alice Springs (Australia) and think “what are those daft Americans talking about?” But everyplace has some hint of wonder. The Adirondack wilderness in New York State isn’t a city street. The Appalachians are one of the oldest mountain ranges on earth and the Adirondacks is a jagged redoubt slightly west of its spine. It’s a good place.

I was there. Before I was old enough to buy beer I strode terrain where nobody goes solo. The place might kick my ass if I tried to get back there.

The memory has given me the urge to sleep in a lean to. What was good then is still good now. Man I can’t wait for summer!

What a wild Monday! Let’s recap how I got here:

March hit me with cabin fever like a tactical nuke. Blocked out of the forest and sick of being indoors, I found myself sitting on my ass in a coffee shop. I completely failed to write the reasoned, intelligent, thoughtful post I thought the world might want. I wound up watching Wall-E, or rather smiling that a little girl’s innocent happiness wasn’t thwarted and that her mom knew how to set priorities.

Given this golden example, I used a blog donation as my excuse to coax my long ignored dirtbike to life and wallow it through icy mudpits. I wrote about it without any particular thinking behind my actions.

It was a wise move. I was happy as a pig in shit; cold and muddy but contented. Then the weather turned cold, as I knew it would. I decided the internet wasn’t going to help my malaise. I tuned out for four or five days. Who needs a world of blackpills and bickering?

Today, I tuned back in. To my surprise, my blog received a delightful smattering of donations in my absence! Y’all must have liked my goofy little bike ride too?

The response certainly improved my mood! It’s especially good juju during the muddy, icy, inaccessibility of spring breakup. (If you live far enough south to not know what “spring breakup” means… be happy and bask in the glow of your advanced spring.)

I want to thank everyone personally, hell I practically wanna’ give y’all a hug. I also want to preserve anonymity. So here’s a quick rundown but with hardly any detail; y’all know who you are.

Rob B gets the first tip o’ the hat because he has cosmic timing. He sent me a twenty even before I knew I needed it. His was the excuse I needed to buy a half gallon of gas (tiny dirtbikes don’t need much fuel) and seek a trails pass (the office was closed but who cares, the excuse to get the bike out of mothballs was the important part). Well done sir!

John D read the tea leaves and sent a bit. He did so pretty quickly. It was routing though banks or whatever probably before the non-existent, virtual, ink was dry on my happy little “fuck it, I rode my motorcycle” post.

R. M. followed up with a nice donation that has me thinking of a thousand things I can do in the approaching spring. Thanks!

The good news showed up as Patreon or Paypals’ auto-generated notes in my e-mail. Then I checked with “buy me a coffee” (it’s neat that musing about “second coffee” set things in motion). Another surprise!

“Buy me a coffee” is semi-public (somewhere between social media and social media adjacent) so I don’t think I’m “outing” anyone. If I do, sorry.

Bustednuckles (who I assume is The Vulgar Curmudgeon?) told me to quit fretting and buy that second coffee. Thanks man!

Joe Henderson sprung for a couple coffees too.

Then “Someone” became a “coffee” member. A real living “Squirrel Fanatic”! How cool is that? It got my mind thinking of the Squirrels… more on that later.

This was followed by “bob” who sprung for a few coffees too. Thanks!

There’s something I want to say before all this sinks into the “scrum of the internet” (not the best analogy). I know that there are “influencers” that rake in far more in a day than I will in a year; but that’s never been my goal. Those “influencers”… they wind up weird. They chase “the algorithm” until they become the algorithm. I’d say the same of YouTube. Whatever corporate behemoth is behind YouTube’s shenanigans (Google?) randomly “demonetizes” people. It is so aggressive that there’s a word for “demonetize”. It encourages “content makers” to self censor themselves into blandness. Such are hazards I wish to avoid.

I took a different path. I write whatever the hell I want. I hope folks notice but I don’t “market” or “optimize SEO” or anything like that. I put up donation and coffee links but mostly assume I’m pissing into the wind amid a cold and uncaring world. The advantage of all this is twofold:

1. I freak out with joy over every single donation. Every time it’s like Christmas.
2. I learn and re-learn again, over and over, that most folks are just plain nice people.

The second point is huge! I don’t get a lot of attention. I don’t get a lot of comments. I don’t get a lot of “hits”. But I get absolutely no negativity.

Remember when the internet was like that? A new and more or less civil place of discourse? Remember normal people happily chattering away like it was a big goofy CB radio? Remember before social media fried everyone’s mind? Well it still exists. At least here it does. I hope you all sense it too. Thanks!

One last thought. I was speaking with a fellow recently who has been a chain smoker forever. He mentioned that he hadn’t had a cigarette in months. I said “Oh that’s great, you quit smoking!”

He said something that has a lot of wisdom in it. “I don’t know if I really quit smoking. I’m reluctant to claim victory until I know.”

I congratulated him on the months he’s made it so far but I get what he’s saying. Nobody knows what the future holds.

I do something similar on my blog. I’ve got a thousand ideas cooking that are interesting. I should write about them but I’m reluctant to mention half assed ideas on my blog; I hold out until they’re “full assed” ideas. (See what I did there?)

I hesitate to mention something that sounds cool, even as I pursue it; at least until I know it’s going to work. I think that’s a flawed thinking. The fun part of every adventure is when you don’t know what’s going to happen.

“Will I get to Wyoming? Will the cheap, tiny, underpowered TW200 handle the WYBDR?” I didn’t say until I was more or less back home.

“Was I going to successfully build a sailboat and ramble around the middle of nowhere like Huck Finn?” I didn’t say until it worked out. (Best sailboat ever!)

I made a New Year’s Eve resolution to not be so “guarded”. I’ll start to put that in play. I’ve got some cool shit planned. I’ll endeavor to write about it even when it’s still in the “potential crash and burn” stage. Everyone is so nice. I will reciprocate.

The internet is awash in negativity and emotional tantrums; but that’s not here. This blog is for nice people!

Thanks!